


Constructive Criticism

by Nhitori



Series: Hatoful Datefriend [3]
Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 15:58:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5592373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nhitori/pseuds/Nhitori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Can I offer you some constructive criticism?</i><br/>Of course!<br/>It fucking sucks.<br/>That's not       constructive </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Anghel Higure is mediocre in his literature class.  Mediocrity is an anomaly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constructive Criticism

Students at St. Pigeonation’s had recently become very used to receiving their papers back marked with both their grades and dried up tears. At the beginning of that year, a new literature teacher had been hired. He seemed to be very good at his chosen subject, of course, but he was very emotionally fragile. Apparently he’d worked with very young children prior to being hired here, and had a /very/ difficult time. His students often wondered, if he cried this often around teenagers, exactly how did he handle the toddlers? He was the only teacher who was very close to the students’ ages, only about seven years older than most third years where most of the teachers were at the very least a decade older.

Usually, high school teachers with such a small age gap didn’t exist outside of teaching assistants, instead relegated to teaching more in the realm of elementary schools and paste connoisseurs, but thanks to a search for top intellects conducted by St. Pigeonations,Kazuaki Nanaki was plucked out of his job working with grubby anklebiters and instead thrust into a world where the general attitude was no longer ‘drugs are bad’ and declarations of love from students would not be brushed off as charming and harmless results of naive youth, but actual problems to be dealt with.

As it was, the tears which covered papers passed back to students came straight from the eyes of one of that teacher. Kazuaki Nanaki would often find himself breaking down in class over his own mistakes, and at home, but at home there was also the factor of other people’s mistakes, given that it was when he corrected papers and unlike the little kids who could be given ambiguous checkmarks, he had to point out every little thing his students did wrong, which was a dreadful drain on his conscience. Teaching was a good career for him, and he’d been pointed in the right direction by somebody that he did still think of fondly, but he often wondered if he’d be better off doing something else. Some other job where… He didn’t have to talk to anybody. Ever. Especially not point out what people did wrong, because he absolutely didn’t want anyone pointing out his mistakes to him and hated that he had to be the one causing such dismay.

Of course, as he trawled through an incredibly disproportionate number of simple grammatical mistakes generated by people who should know much better, he was also just crying because many of them were so hard to read. So obviously lacking in effort… When he was back in school, if he didn’t feel like trying, he just didn’t do the assignment! It was definitely better than making the poor teacher read a last-minute bullshit attempt…

Ah, but then he supposed that some students would rather get a low grade than an absolute zero. Even at inconvenience to themselves, and to their teacher… people would definitely make fun of him for crying over grammatical errors, but he just couldn’t stop the tears from coming! He loved literature, and to see it so poorly analyzed in papers with what he could only truly describe as having very low production value… it really pushed his buttons.

Every single one of Kazuaki Nanaki’s buttons was a ‘burst into tears’ button of course, though the crying did vary in intensity depending on how long they were held down or how many times they were pushed in quick succession. There were a few good papers, which didn’t dip below B+ grades, but then every other one was just… awful. There was no such thing as a mediocre paper, they were all either good or terrible.

And there was one… one which was surreal. One which Kazuaki could give a C for a grade, but it certainly wasn’t simply average… the grammar was all very good, it was technically proficient, but every bit of the analysis was completely out of left field and took him the better part of half an hour to even interpret. It was as if somebody had tried to write an essay entirely in the form of a poem, and while that was certainly interesting, it wasn’t exactly what the curriculum called for in any way, shape, or form.

Kazuaki took another look at the name on the paper, discovering that it was the work of somebody who rarely talked in class. A quiet kid who was known to wear crosses, platforms, and chains… exactly the type of teenager that every single conservative in the world collectively referred to as ‘teens these days’ with disgust in their tones. He even had hair that was not only dyed, but often teased into ridiculous poufed spikes that nearly hid his eye, while the other eye was kept bandaged at all times for some reason or another… how exactly could he see?

Well, Kazuaki wasn’t so keen on offering retakes to the students who obviously hadn’t tried at all, but now that he’d actually come across something of middling quality he couldn’t bring himself not to. This essay just reeked of wasted potential, given how well-written it was, actually. The real problem was only in the voice used, and the vocabulary which could never be understood by a layman; unlike the interspersing of fifty-cent words amongst an otherwise legible piece, there was just no context available for somebody without a very firm grasp on language to comprehend a word of it.

Again, though, this did serve as proof that Higure was a very learned boy… to be able to construct sentences like that, and clearly understand the meaning of the words in conjunction with eachother made it very obvious that he wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill writer. Kazuaki caught himself wondering if the boy perhaps wrote poetry in his free time, or at least some sort of fiction. If he didn’t, well, that was a talent wasted on this essay that had to unfortunately be marked as mediocre.

Kazuaki Nanaki would have to have a talk with this student.


End file.
